


Honeyed

by l_cloudy



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Background Damen/Jokaste, Background Damen/Lykaios, F/F, Pre-Canon, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-10 15:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: Her lips were soft and tasted of vanilla. Jokaste had never believed that a woman’s mouth could truly taste like something until Lykaios, whose entire purpose in life was to be sweet.





	Honeyed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



> Nabielka, you had the most amazing prompts and I was really glad to have the opportunity to write for you. Happy ChocoBox Day!

Jokaste hadn’t been expecting the slave girl.

The company she kept in her apartments was usually more lively, close companions and long-time caretakers. She had bought none of her family’s slaves from home. That had been out of necessity rather than preference: Aegina was the poorest province in Akielos, and her family was on the lower side of middling. All of the slaves her parents owned were those fallen into debt-slavery, men and women of the lower classes without any of the refined training a palace slave would have, and no hint of that calmly adoring attitude.

As a girl, Jokaste had sometimes been ashamed of her family’s station, how their income went into farms and livestock instead of perfumes and jewels. Lately, however, but lately she had begun to think herself lucky that she hadn’t had the sort of upbringing she’d once desperately wished. Had she been raised like Damianos, certainly she would take everything for granted just as he did.

When Agatha knocked on her bedroom door and told her that one of Prince Damianos’s slaves was here for her, Jokaste’s brows arched in surprise.

She looked around the room, with the granite columns, the large balcony and the gold-leaf mirror. Something about this place – the smell, perhaps, or the opulence – still felt unfamiliar. Jokaste had been given these apartments only three weeks earlier, shortly after she’d begun entertaining Damianos. Damen, he’d asked to be called. She had wondered, at the time, whether Damianos himself had been behind her new rooms, or whether the palace steward had taken the initiative.

She said, “Send her in.”

The slave girl entered and came to kneel on the cold marble.

“My lady,” she murmured.

She wasn’t quite a girl, not truly, despite the innocent air suggested by her meek demeanour. The slave was older than herself, a woman well into the prime of her life, and Jokaste wondered how many more years were left until she was discarded. What was to be of her, once she no longer suited the tastes of the man she’d been moulded for.

Jokaste recognized her face. This girl had watched she and Damianos fuck, a few times. It hadn’t been planned: they had been dallying in bed and the slave had been there also. It had been unnerving for Jokaste, but a man of Damianos’s station wouldn’t expect anything less than her full attention on him, and so she had closed her eyes and gone on with it.

Back then, she had ignored the girl. Now she had her full attention.

Jokaste said, “Yes?”

“I have come to tell you that your presence is requested by Damianos- exalted in his apartments this evening, my lady,” said the slave. “For dinner.”

Jokaste knew. She had been made aware of this evening’s engagement exactly four times now: the first time by the palace steward, the second time in an intimate note penned by someone that was not Damianos, the third time from the functionary who oversaw the needs of the women of the court. And now from Damianos’s own slave, lest she forgot she had dinner with the Prince.

It was exciting, she supposed. She had never officially been invited to Damianos’s rooms for anything besides fucking before, though she had invited herself twice to test the boundaries. The invitation was significant, and uncharacteristic of Damianos; if she played her game carefully, she could be Queen. She would be good at it: she had the beauty, the bearings, and all of the social graces. Her wit was sharp and her tongue could turn honeyed. Her mind was sharper still, but that did not seem to be a requirement, here in Ios. Back home Jokaste’s parents only had daughters, and one day her oldest sister’s husband would rule her family’s lands in name only.

The slave girl did not speak again, but she made no move to leave. Jokaste watched her and thought of Damen, who gifted her expensive trinkets that someone else picked for her, and gave her great pleasure in bed in the specific manner he chose. He’d taken her climbing on the cliffs once, and out for rides, and he remembered that she liked Patran chocolates and honeyed wine. He was earnest and kind-hearted and oblivious, and they spoke two wholly different languages.

The girl – who Damen owned, body and mind – waited calmly with her gaze to the floor. Jokaste realized belatedly that the slave was waiting to be addressed, and bristled at the reminder of her ignorance in palace etiquette. She would have to remedy that: if things went well, she would be supposed to make use of Damianos’s slaves, eventually.

“Is there more?” she asked, and the girl nodded.

“If it pleases you, my lady. I could instruct you?”

“Instruct me?” Jokaste found herself frowning slightly. _In what? How to sit at dinner?_ Damianos’s slaves were skilled in recitations of poetry, something Jokaste had enjoyed doing for her family as a girl, but had left behind in Aegina once she’d realized how some of her interests were regarded by the court. But certainly that couldn’t be it. Unless Damianos had learned of her love for the works of Kleyon – doubtful.

Then the slave said, “I have been trained for Damianos-exalted, my lady, and delivered to him nine years past. I am well versed in his preferences.”

It took Jokaste a few moments to realize what the words meant. Her first impulse was to slap the girl for daring to suggest it. Her second was to smother Damianos with a pillow.

“Did.” The words remained stuck in her throat; she pushed them through. “Did Damen send you with this?” If he’d asked her to call him Damen, then she would call him Damen. If she was to suffer the indignity of this conversation, he would get no titles from her.

“I was sent by Simon, my lady, the household overseer of Damianos-exalted.” Well, that wasn’t quite as bad. She made note of the name. “I am well versed in this also, my lady. I have performed these services before.”

 _For all of his other lovers_. Jokaste sat down on the bed.

“My lady?”

Jokaste looked at the girl, truly looked at her. She had honey-blond hair that fell down like a waterfall to her lower waist, darker at the roots. Her eyes were downcast, but her lashes were long and curved. All the exercise her slender body ever received was in how to hold her positions and fold her limbs in all sort of ways to present her body for fucking. She would be soft all over, and she would be quiet when she came, unless her master required her not to be. Her pleasure was not for her.

“What is your name?” It seemed absurd, suddenly, that she did not yet know.

“Lykaios, if it pleases my lady.”

 _And if didn’t please me?_ she wanted to ask. What – would she change it? If her name didn’t please Damianos, if he woke up one morning and decided it sounded ugly to his ears, she would. Someone would change it for her.

Jokaste had been sharing Damianos’s bed regularly for a month now. She was not his only lover among the ladies of Ios, of course, but she was the one he bedded the most. While she herself had no obligation to keep to Damianos’s bed, it would have been folly for her to do otherwise. And now this: a slave girl, perfect and docile, when some part of her had always wondered how it would be.

Jokaste said, “What kind of preferences?”

Without a word, Lykaios unpinned her clothing gracefully, a sprawl of mauve silk uncoiling around her body to the floor. “May I, my lady?”

The silk would get wrinkled like this. Three years of Jokaste’s income had gone into her court wardrobe; when she had arrived in Ios, she’d had maybe three or four dresses of silks as fine as the scraps palace slaves wore. Lykaios left it where it was.

Bared to the sight, her body was an expanse of flawless skin. It was indoor pale, made even more striking by her natural olive undertones. Against more vivid colours she might look washed out, but the marbles of Ios were white and her slave clothing were all in pale pastels. Everything about Lykaios was soft and yielding. Her body was waxed and bare all over.

Lykaios began making for the bed. She slid gracefully over the marble, crawling on hands and knees, hair falling to brush the floor. There was a strange fascination rising up in Jokaste’s chest, a breathless feeling she couldn’t quite place.

“Wait,” she said, and Lykaios stopped immediately, folding back to the floor.

“I only – I meant,” said Jokaste. “I do not have the time today. But I’ll appreciate your – instructions. Some other time.” She had to ready herself for dinner. She had to sink into scalding water and try to process the sheer unreality of what happened this afternoon, understand how to best play it to her purposes.

“For now,” she said. “You could show me, if you would, how Damen likes to kiss.” It would be Damen from now on. Jokaste would surprise him with it at dinner, and he would smile at her for all the wrong reasons. He had offered that name to her and she would take it; she would take Lykaios, too, but not for Damen. That would be for her.

“Of course, my lady.”

It wasn’t long at all before Jokaste found herself sitting on the corner of her bed with a woman on her lap. A slave girl. There was a difference, there. Lykaios was still naked, because Jokaste had forgot to order her to dress. Some part of her felt uncomfortable with the arrangement, but she ignored it resolutely. Lykaios’s body was warm, and it was exciting to have her like this. How Damen had her, every day.

Lykaios, gently and reverentially, directed her to tilt her head at an angle and open her mouth just so. She showed Jokaste how she was to respond, not to take control, but to give back all that she got and show playful initiative. Lykaios was indeed very knowledgeable in the subject of her master’s preferences, and Jokaste wondered how old she had been the first time she had been instructed so.

Her lips were soft and tasted like vanilla. Jokaste had never believed that a woman’s mouth could truly taste like a real flavour until Lykaios, whose entire purpose in life was to be sweet. Her hair was soft as well, and thick, and her skin too was scented, perfectly smooth to the touch.

All about Lykaios was soft; she had been made like this. It wasn’t a role Jokaste enjoyed playing at, however.

“What about like this,” she said, and took Lykaios’s face in her palms, kissing deeply into her mouth.

It was electrifying. Meant as she was to be playing Damen’s part, Lykaios matched Jokaste move for move. She let her hands wander to Jokaste’s nape and her hair, the top of her breasts. Her breath was warm, and her tongue deft as she licked into Jokaste’s mouth, tracing the ring of her teeth. It was thrilling, to find her responding. She smiled into the kiss.

When Jokaste opened her eyes, she found Lykaios’s staring into her own, unblinking.

Her eyes were hazel-green, fronded with thick lashes, and utterly blank. The shock of it was enough that Jokaste started, and immediately Lykaios pulled herself away.

“My lady,” she said, and her voice was calm and meek, and dutiful. Everything about this had been dutiful, for her. “At the end, I haven’t – that is not how we’re instructed to kiss the Exalted. But perhaps it would be different, for you.”

“Perhaps,” said Jokaste. She really did want that hot bath right now; she felt cold all over. “Thank you,” she said. “For your instructions. You can go now.”

Lykaios obediently stood up from the bed and went to gather her discarded garments into her arms. She had dimples down on her back, and Jokaste felt the urge to cup her arse into her hands. She wondered if Damen ever took her there, if that was something they taught girls in the training gardens.

There was one thing Jokaste knew about the training gardens: back home, she and her sister Margaret had shared an attendant who’d once been meant for the son of a kyros, until a training accident had left her with a scar on her chin. You could hardly see it even in the strong morning light, but the girl had been immediately discarded all the same, and sold for a pittance.

Lykaios, a personal slave to the future King, was completely unblemished, a work of art. Not much of a person, but certainly pleasing.

“You should redress,” she said. Jokaste hadn’t enough experience with royal slaves to know whether Lykaios would have done it regardless, or whether she might have gone around naked. Were courtiers allowed to look upon the Prince’s property? The other way around was a certainty. Everything and everyone was for Damen to look upon, to take if it pleased him.

“Should I come back, my lady?” said Lykaios. “Some other time?”

Jokaste thought about it. The idea was enticing, because of Lykaios and because of Damen and because of all the things they all were to each other, but oddly sickening at the same time. She hadn’t ever expected, when she’d left home for the refined divertissements of Ios, that something like this would be offered to her. But this was life in the court, and she was here to stay.

Lykaios’s eyes were to her feet, her silks pinned back in place, but her hair was mussed. Her cheeks were tinged red.

“Yes,” said Jokaste. She thought: tonight, sat at dinner with Damen, she would sip honeyed wine, and remember the taste of vanilla.


End file.
